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We No Longer Need Aliens to Feel Alienated: State of Paradise by Laura Van Den Berg

We No Longer Need Aliens to Feel Alienated: State of Paradise by Laura Van Den Berg

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State of Paradise (Picador paperback reprint, July 8, 2025). Cover art:
detail from Tiger in a Tropical Storm by Henri Rousseau, 1891

When I was a kid there was a public service announcement on TV that went something like “Attention: Aliens. You are required by law to report by January 31st.” This was because of the Alien Act of 1940, otherwise known as the Smith Act. Basically, the legislation made it illegal to advocate the violent overthrow of the U.S. government and provided for a tracking system of non-citizens who, in the context of Nazi occupation of Eastern Europe and its then alliance with the Soviet Union, were potential suspects of espionage and sabotage. (Fun fact: prosecutions for advocating overthrow of the government have been ruled as unconstitutional violations of the First Amendment, in case you were wondering how any nitwit on social media can mouth off about doing just that.)

But as I didn’t know anything about this, the announcement always conjured an image of big headed, bug-eyed tentacled Martians registering at the local post office. Which I thought pretty funny. One thing I’ve learned over the years, and particularly these days,  is that much of what adults say in all seriousness is often funny, but not in a “ha ha” way. More in a Jean Paul Sartre absurdist kind of way.

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Of Men, Monsters, and Little People

Of Men, Monsters, and Little People

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Of Men and Monsters, by William Tenn
(Ballantine Books, December 1975). Cover by Boris Vallejo

After posting about The Borrowers by British author Mary Norton (1903 -1992) last week, several people mentioned other books and movies with similar kinds of themes — little people living in the houses of big people. I thought I might take another post to discuss a few other examples from my own book collection.

First up is series by American author John Peterson (1924 – 2002). The first one was just called The Littles and was published in 1967, 15 years after The Borrowers (1952). The Littles live much like the “borrowers. They look human except for having tails. (In films they apparently look very mouselike but that’s not the case in the books.)

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One of the Finest Achievements of Heroic Fantasy in the 20th Century: Dilvish, the Damned by Roger Zelazny

One of the Finest Achievements of Heroic Fantasy in the 20th Century: Dilvish, the Damned by Roger Zelazny

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Dilvish, the Damned (Del Rey, November 1982). Cover by Michael Herring

Roger Zelazny was unquestionably one of the great American fantasists of the 20th century. That’s not to say he was perfect. His woman characters were often 2-dimensional, and he paired an unwillingness to work with an outline (“Trust your demon” was his motto) with a fondness for projects that really needed an outline.

But perfection is boring. Zelazny rarely is. Much of Zelazny’s work is on my always-reread list, anyway. He had a nifty way of putting things, and in describing the Amber series he brilliantly expressed the kind of fiction I love best and have often tried to write: “philosophic romance, shot through with elements of horror and morbidity.” Philoromhorrmorbpunk. That’s my genre. Or you could just say sword-and-sorcery.

Some people doubt whether Zelazny counts as a sword-and-sorcery writer, but he didn’t doubt it. He described not only the Corwin novels but also big chunks of Lord of Light as sword-and-sorcery. Some people think that a story only counts as S&S if it has a Clonan at its center, but as far as I’m concerned, if you’ve got an outsider hero on a personal mission in a landscape of magical adventure, and there are swords or other edged weapons, you’ve got sword-and-sorcery.

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And Now For Something Completely Different: The Borrowers, by Mary Norton

And Now For Something Completely Different: The Borrowers, by Mary Norton

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The Borrowers and The Borrowers Afield, by Mary Norton
(Odyssey/Harcourt, January 1998). Covers by Marla Frazee

I’ve done four posts in a row on Edgar Rice Burroughs, with more to come. But right now it’s time for a change of pace.

It’s going to be a big change for this particular post. It’s about The Borrowers. In my late teens, after I learned Andre Norton was a woman, someone told me she’d written books under her own name of Mary Norton, and that one was called The Borrowers. Turns out this wasn’t true; her original name was Alice Mary Norton, although she changed it legally to Andre Alice Norton in 1934. This was in the late 1970s, pre-internet, and I believed Andre Norton wrote The Borrowers for several years. It added to her charm for a while because I’d read The Borrowers when I was 11 or 12 and adored it.

The Borrowers may seem pretty far afield from Sword & Planet fiction, but the story of little people living in human houses and borrowing things from them, which would explain why things got “lost,” inspired my imagination and I invented many stories of myself shrunk down to that size and adventuring. After I wrote Swords of Talera, my first S&P novel, I toyed with the idea of writing an S&P story with borrower size characters but never did. Many many years later I discovered a graphic novel from DC called Sword of the Atom, which somewhat scratched that itch for me. (More on that later.)

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“Worms of the Earth” and Robert E. Howard’s Ultimate Triumph

“Worms of the Earth” and Robert E. Howard’s Ultimate Triumph

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Robert E. Howard in a photo sent to H.P. Lovecraft in 1931,
and Bran Mak Morn: The Last King (Del Rey, May 31, 2005)

January 22, 2025 was the 119th birthday of Robert E. Howard, my favorite author. The works of this great author resonate with countless fans to this day.

“Worms of the Earth” is my favorite story by Robert E. Howard. It features Bran Mak Morn, the last king of the Picts.

Howard was fascinated with Picts, his conception of whom was largely mythological, with splashes of real world history. The Picts in his stories span Kull, Conan, Bran, James Allison, and more.

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Half a Century of Reading Tolkien: Part Three – The Two Towers by JRR Tolkien

Half a Century of Reading Tolkien: Part Three – The Two Towers by JRR Tolkien

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Gollum sat up again and looked at him under his eyelids. ‘He’s over there,’ he cackled. ‘Always there. Orcs will take you all the way. Easy to find Orcs east of the River. Don’t ask Sméagol. Poor, poor Sméagol, he went away long ago. They took his Precious, and he’s lost now.’

‘Perhaps we’ll find him again, if you come with us,’ said Frodo.

‘No, no, never! He’s lost his Precious,’ said Gollum.

Sméagol from The Taming of Sméagol of  The Two Towers

When I was younger, The Two Towers (1954) seemed to suffer from middle-book syndrome: the bits after the start of series that had to be trudged through in order to reach the exciting end. Not all of it — it does feature a big battle complete with magic and explosives — but Frodo, Sam, and Smeagol’s trek to Mordor sometimes felt as arduous for me to read as it was for them to cross the swamp and slag heaps. Now, I believe The Two Towers, and the second half, The Ring Goes East, is the heart of the whole series. Nowhere does Prof. Tolkien speak more clearly on the weight of war, the burden and necessity of standing against evil, and the eroding effects of that duty.

The Two Towers has some of the most powerful writing in all the trilogy. There are several passages that have never failed to move me. That one of the most powerful of these lines was taken away from Sam  carelessly given to Bad Faramir (more on that atrocity later), is one of the greatest crimes among the many I hold against Peter Jackson.

It’s the book of the trilogy that contains the most obvious references to Tolkien’s own service at the Somme in 1916. In the comments on my first article in this series, Half a Century of Reading Tolkien: Part One, K. Jespersen wrote that the books tasted of ashes, a flavor he linked directly to the First World War. I don’t tastes ashes in the books myself, but there are chapters redolent  of them.

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Cover Reveal: Space Ships! Ray Guns! Martian Octopods!: Interviews with Science Fiction Legends, edited by Richard Wolinsky

Cover Reveal: Space Ships! Ray Guns! Martian Octopods!: Interviews with Science Fiction Legends, edited by Richard Wolinsky

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Space Ships! Ray Guns! Martian Octopods!: Interviews with Science Fiction Legends (Tachyon Publications, September 2, 2025). Cover by Yoshi Vu

At Black Gate, we’re all about science fiction legends. Specifically, science fiction legends who appeared in paperback in spinner racks in the 70s and 80s. Or pulp magazines. Or wrote adventures at the dawn of the role playing industry. You know what, forget all that. We’re not picky.

What makes a true science fiction legend? This is the sort of thing that’s hotly debated on social media, and at science fiction conventions, and in lengthy blog posts titled “Towards a New Science Fiction Canon, Because Yours is Old and Stupid.” But recently, public opinion has shifted. To be a science fiction legend, the most important criteria is that your name looks good in green font on a 50s CRT monitor, preferably in a cool underground bunker. Exactly like the cover of Space Ships! Ray Guns! Martian Octopods!: Interviews with Science Fiction Legends, the upcoming book from Richard Wolinsky and Tachyon Publications.

I’ve spent long hours staring at this cover (by the marvelously talented Yoshi Vu), and the more I do, the more I’m convinced I’m right. Just look at those names. Look at how cool they are! Roger Zelazny, Theodore Sturgeon, Robert Sheckley, Jack Williamson, Fritz Leiber, Damon Knight, Poul Anderson, Isaac Asimov, Anne McCaffrey, William F. Nolan, Terry Carr, Frederik Pohl. Right now you’re shaking your head, but you know I’m right.

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The Gorey Century

The Gorey Century

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Yesterday was the 100th birthday of Edward Gorey, one of the most unique, unclassifiable artists that this country has ever produced. Though he died in 2000, he has a continuing cultural presence; he certainly lives on in my life and in the lives of a great many people.

Back in the incumbency of Jimmy Carter, when I was studying theater and living in the dorms of California State University Long Beach, one year I had a roommate named Scott. Scott didn’t fit into our tight-knit little community very well, and while I’ve always prided myself on my ability to get along with everyone, I didn’t get along very well with him. We had a bumpy year together, but I will always be glad that we were roommates, because Scott introduced me to the work of Edward Gorey, and that was a priceless gift that I can never repay him for.

Edward Gorey was a man of many talents — He did scenic and costume design for the stage, winning a Tony Award in 1978 for his costume designs for Dracula (his set design for that production was also nominated) and several of his stories are about ballet, which was one of his supreme passions. Additionally, he did highly individual book covers; for several years he did them for Anchor Paperbacks (including, among many others, editions of H.G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds, Franz Kafka’s Amerika, and T.S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats), which are highly prized today simply for their Gorey covers. He also edited and illustrated a collection of classic ghost stories (1959’s Edward Gorey’s Haunted Looking-Glass) and did covers and illustrations for several of the supernatural mysteries of John Bellairs.

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The Fiction of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Part IV: The Hollow Earth and Pellucidar

The Fiction of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Part IV: The Hollow Earth and Pellucidar

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The Hollow Earth novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs: At the Earth’s Core (Ace Books, August 1978), Pellucidar (Del Rey, May 1990), Tanar of Pellucidar, Back to the Stone Age, Land of Terror, and Savage Pellucidar (Ace Books, January 1973). Covers by Frank Frazetta and David Mattingly (Pellucidar)

Above are my Edgar Rice Burroughs Pellucidar books. Tarzan at the Earth’s Core goes with this series as well, although I included it in Part II of this series, with my Tarzan collection. In these stories, Pellucidar is a hollow area at the center of the Earth. There are openings into it at the North and South poles, but in the initial book, At the Earth’s Core, an American named David Innes reaches the interior by riding inside a giant drill. This is kind of a reverse of the Sword & Planet plot in which the Earthman is taken outward to another world.

Pellucidar is an interesting construction and ERB clearly gave it some thought. There’s a miniature sun at the center that leads to perpetual day, and the only shadowy area on the surface of Pellucidar is an area of constant twilight beneath the bulk of the unmoving moon. The interior has no horizon because everything curves up and away from the viewer, and the land and water masses are the reverse of the surface, leaving a lot of land. The world is populated by all kinds of extinct outer lifeforms that wandered in through the polar entrances, including some dinosaurs and the remnants of the mammal megafauna.

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Following in the Steps of Robert E. Howard: The Eye of Sounnu by Schuyler Hernstrom

Following in the Steps of Robert E. Howard: The Eye of Sounnu by Schuyler Hernstrom

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The Eye of Sounnu (DMR Books, May 3, 2020)

The concept of barbarism vs. civilization is a topic that Robert E. Howard often explored in his incredibly crafted fiction. Other authors, many inspired by Howard, have explored the concept through their own creations.

Notable among these is modern sword-and-sorcery author Schuyler Hernstrom, whose collection of short stories, The Eye of Sounnu, was published by DMR Books. The collection contains a wonderful story called “Mortu and Kyrus in the White City,” which features northland, pagan barbarian (Mortu) and his learned companion (Kryus), a monotheistic monk who suffers a curse and now lives in the body of a monkey — but that does not preclude him from waxing philosophically about the world and mankind’s place in it.

There was an exchange between the two that I recently read, and I had to reread it, and then reread it again, because I enjoyed it so much, so I share it here, for my friends of similar interests.

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